Seven: Descant
by Ellen Weaver
Summary: Once upon a time, there was a beautiful musician who lost something precious. The Goblin Queen offers to give him back what was stolen in exchange for seven of his songs. Labyrinth: AU, role-reversal, based off of Frances Osgood's story "Seven."
1. I The Curtain Rises

**I. The Curtain Rises  
**

* * *

The man with fingers pale as milk strummed chords on his red guitar in the deepening summer twilight and sang songs that nobody paid to hear. Nobody stayed to listen except for an oil-black starveling dog, keeping a respectful distance, its jackal-ears upright and attentive.

The jingle-jangle of city noise obscured the notes, made him a part of the background chorus. Still he played, playing for himself, playing to hear the song come together. There was something he was trying to remember, but could not. Only the music could tell him, but the lyrics remained evasive.

He sighed as he slung his instrument over his back and bent to count the feeble offerings of coins, buttons, and two five-pound notes. Money bred money, and he'd lined the nest of his offering-box with those two quid himself, hoping for a return on his investment. What he had would be enough for his daily bread, which would likely take the form of a fried pasty from the corner food kiosk. He sighed as he counted his take.

"I wish…" he said, but didn't complete the thought out loud. He wished for a few things. He wished he could remember the song he hadn't written yet, a song about a woman with black hair and white skin and eyes as green as glass. He wished he could remember the woman. And he wished he could remember who he'd been before the endless nights reaching out, searching with the tendrils of his mind, for both the song and the woman, if they weren't just imps of the imagination. He fingered the brass button between his fingers and cocked his head up at the dog.

"I wish you would pay me for my songs," he said to the sleek, collarless stray. "You've listened long enough." He hurled the button out into the street with all the force of his frustrated anger and squeezed his eyes shut. When he opened them again, the dog was gone. Instead, there on the corner near to him, wrapped in a black velvet coat, was a woman with white skin, red lips, and green, green eyes, and hair so dark it seemed to melt into the fur lining of her high collar.

"Do you know who I am?" she murmured in a voice all made of pillow-talk and risk. She came forward and he backed up a step. Her black-gloved hands were full of banknotes, green as her eyes, American money, and she pressed the sum at him. "Don't you know who I am?" she whispered to him. Her body was perfumed in something expensive and heady, and her eyes were ringed with dark mascara, like a raccoon-mask in the dark. She smelled of expensive tastes, and luxury… and danger. He flinched away as she tried to put the money in his hands.

"You're dangerous," he said.

She laughed, parting the devastating red wound of her mouth, the tendons in her neck pulsating. Her teeth were white as salt. "Yes," she said in a lover's voice, smooth and warming as whiskey. "I'm the Goblin Queen." She pried open his clenched hands and put the cash in his fist. "Take it. You wished for it. Or are you afraid of me?"

"I'm not afraid!" he said fiercely. "Goblin Queen," he said mockingly.

"Queen of the lost and lonely, the wished-away, the abandoned and forgotten. Jareth." The hairs on the back of his neck stood up in horror as she murmured his name at him like a terrible threat. "You know me. You've lost something, and I can give it back to you. If."

"If _what_," he said, staring hard at her.

"If you pay me. Seven songs you'll make for me, in the abandoned land Underground. And if you can do this, I'll give you back what was stolen."

"If you can give it back to me, you know what was stolen," he said, tossing his blond hair over his shoulders. He threw her money at her feet. "How can you know something I don't know about myself?"

"You dare refuse me?" she growled. "This is now a killing matter. Seven songs in seven nights, or lose yourself completely, and forever. And not even the memory of forgetting what you've lost. Seven songs on seven themes, or you'll forfeit your hopes and the scraps of dreams." Her smile was like blood, her eyes like balefire.

"I will fight you," he said mildly, though the counter-threat was implicit in the stance of his shoulders and strong forearms.

"Oh, Jareth," she said, speaking his name in tones honey-sweet as an ache. "I'll welcome the distraction of any game you want to play. That, too, will satisfy me greatly. Come with me now. No more delays. Time is short." She took his arm in a captor's grip, firm as dog's teeth set in prey-flesh.

The air left his lungs and a sudden gust of night wind closed his eyes in a rush of dust and glitter. When he had the strength to breathe and see again, he was… gone, the captive of the Goblin Queen, in the heart of her terrible kingdom.

* * *

_This story is a parasitical offspring of Frances Osgood's story "Seven." Anyone else who wants to play with this theme is welcome, but give credit to Fanny for taking the lead._


	2. II Overture and Incidental Music

**II. Overture and Incidental Music**

* * *

The palace of the Goblin Queen was dark and cold. He shivered as he stood before her.

"You tremble," she breathed, from her throne of black ice. "Are you afraid?"

He laughed at her. His laughter died an early death as he saw how unmoved she was by his defiance.

"I'm shivering because I'm cold," he said, making it a statement of fact. "I think you must be cold, too, Lady." The lovely Goblin Queen lounged back on her throne, and her lips made motions toward a smile that never quite reached her eyes.

"Yes," she whispered in the vast echoing darkness of her throne-room. "Yes, I am very cold. But you're here to warm me. Jareth."

Invisible hands caught him up, and raised him up on a plinth. From her throne on her dais, they were at eye level with one another.

"Let me warm you," she said with a sibilant hiss.

He felt the invisible hands again on him. At first he struggled against this intrusive, insolent touch, but he saw the pleasure his resistance gave the Goblin Queen, and calmed himself. He left his hands at his sides and stared hard at her, keeping himself still even when the gentle assault on him became invasive. These hands stole his guitar from him, and then his coat, and finally even his shirt and pants. He gritted his teeth when they came to pull off his shoes and private garments, but kept his eyes fixed upon the Goblin Queen on her icy throne, neither helping nor hindering the thieves. His flesh quilled as he stood there naked before her, and then he trembled again—from cold, from cold.

"You have interesting ideas of how to warm me, Lady," he said, scowling. "Without my clothes, I'm colder than I was before."

"And yet I'm warmer," she said. "Soon you will be, too." Her smile became predatory. He felt himself touched by those eyes, shaped and measured and held and stroked. And the invisible hands of her minions touched him as well, leaving nothing of his own flesh to himself. He _was_ warmer, Jareth realized with a small shock of horror. Her invasive and cruel appraisal of his naked body was arousing, and the stroking caresses of the shadows made his blood heat in his veins. He refused to bend his neck. This shame was not unique in his experience.

"Are you planning to keep me naked? Perhaps have me mount you, black bitch? Here I thought all you wanted were my songs." He put his hands on his hips and struck a defiant pose.

"Oh, Jareth," she said, laughing like a little girl. "I don't let wild creatures into my bed. You might bring fleas." Her eyes glowed like hellish lamps in the dark and he trembled, and this time not from cold, not cold. "I _will_ collar you, I think." Her voice held hints of desire and cruelty in equal measure, as it crooned out a prediction. "A collar all made of gold and brass and iron, a collar I'll hang around that slender white neck."

He gave her an impudent grin; his inmost self did not feel the least bit cheerful. "When can I expect this lavish gift from Milady?"

She rested her face against her gloved hand. "Soon," she murmured. The air reeked with the perfume of dead ashes and old sex. "One day soon. On the day you beg me to."

"Soon might be a while," he snapped. The invisible hands came against his naked body again, and he couldn't help but flinch. But this time, they came not to arouse but to clothe him, in long soft grey oak-bark patterned pants, a black loose shirt, and a coat made of the overlapped carapaces of scarab beetles. The new boots reached to his knees, and gleamed with the same iridescent oil-sheen as the enameling of the jacket. He smiled, admiring himself.

"You enjoy what you see?"

"What I can see," he replied, catching a length of a black tattered cloak up over his arm. "Your kingdom, Lady, gives very little scope for the imagination. But your taste in clothing is impeccable."

"What you _can_ see," the Goblin Queen murmured, drawing herself up off her icy throne like a ripple of water. "What you can see. Think well, Jareth. When I ask it of you, you will deliver your first song to me. Sing me a song of sight and blindness."

"I'll need my guitar," he protested.

"No," she said, with a note of anger roughening her voice and making the air around her shimmer. "You only need yourself, for the music I want." She raised her hands above her head and clapped them sharply, and seemed to dissolve into a roiling ball of fabric and fur which became a shadow-dog, disappearing into the shadow-hall.

"Tomorrow night," her voice echoed in the horizontal darkness.

* * *

_Super shout-out to Frances Osgood. Remember this isn't the original story; this is just a tribute!_


	3. III A Song of Sight and Blindness

**III. A Song of Sight and Blindness  
**

* * *

When he was certain the Goblin Queen had gone, or at least her attention was directed elsewhere, Jareth carefully felt with his feet for the edges of the pillar he was standing on and slowly climbed down from its three-foot height. His boots clacked uncertainly on the floor; the arch of the high heels forced the muscles of his back and legs into unusual configurations.

He hadn't been commanded to stay, or stay here at least, like a bird on a perch. His wings hadn't been clipped. Not yet. He chose a direction to the left, the opposite direction the Goblin Queen had taken, and used the throne and his platform—the only visible things in the stone-echoing gloom—as navigational lodestones. He walked with a determined stride away from all that his stage and her seat represented.

He walked, and his thighs and buttocks burned with the unaccustomed gait. He was hungry and tired, but he let his anger feed and energize him. Anger was surely better than fear, and he had no intention of giving the Goblin Queen the pleasure of seeing him afraid.

He walked, only stumbling once or twice, one hand held out before him in the darkness to keep him from inadvertently smashing himself against the walls or any other new or strange décor. His breaths and his footsteps became a metronome.

_Sight and blindness_, he thought. _I'm blind; give me sight to see. Give me wings to fly. Give me food to eat. Don't let her see me cry._

He elaborated on his thoughts as he walked, and the rhythm of the words soothed his uneasiness at how impressively huge the Goblin Queen's throne room seemed to be.

_I'm blind, give me light to see.  
I'm close to broken, you'll never get to break me.  
If I could see, I'd see my way to fly...  
Up there above you, you wouldn't see me cry.  
And when I hide, you can only seek by finding.  
I can't see, and you make visions blinding._

He began to get a sense of the rhythm of the music, and he let a few strange, aggressive notes slip out with half-formed words under his breath. Jareth felt, as he walked, that some light must be visible in the darkness up ahead, because although he still couldn't see where he was, he had the sense that there was more ahead. He walked more quickly, searching, losing the tempo of his nascent song, and in one moment more cried out with pain as his thighs and hips collided with an unseen obstacle. He hissed and rubbed away the pain.

He was back at his perch, back before the Goblin Queen's icy throne. This place was a closed loop, with no exit. Left, or right, it was all the same: all paths led back to captivity. "Damn you!" he said angrily. He bent over the lip of the platform, resting his head and chest upon it.

"If I could see, I'd see my way to fly," he choked out in broken notes.

A light bloomed in the dark above his head. He looked up, and then climbed back atop the circular platform. There was a lamp in the shape of a white face, with huge terrified eyes that released green sparks and noisome perfumed witchfire. Jareth reached out a hand to touch it, and drew back when the heated porcelain burned him.

"Here comes a candle to light you to bed," he sang in a doleful key. A candle appeared at his feet, illuminating a soft padded cushion and rough blanket under his boot-heels. He stopped himself in surprise before he could accidentally finish the verse.

"Give me a key out of this place?" he sang, experimentally. But no key appeared. The lamp and the candle continued to sullenly burn at his head and his feet.

"Ah," he said. He sat down cross-legged upon the platform and removed his boots, wiggling his toes.

"Out, flickering lights, back to the dark that made you," he trilled curiously.

The lamp and candle disappeared.

"Shave and a haircut, two bits?" he sang hopefully. Nothing happened. But Jareth felt he had learned something useful. What he sang would come to be, provided he was singing to the Goblin Queen's theme, and upon the stage she had set for him.

"Dinner by candlelight, the sweetest meal to eat," he intoned.

A bone candelabra in the shape of a deer's antler illuminated a dish of fruit and cheese and a bottle of sweet wine.

He ate methodically, considering what other elaborations upon his confinement he might be able to make. He also considered, carefully, what weapons might be his.

* * *

When the Goblin Queen returned to collect her song, Jareth was ready for her. She appeared upon her throne in a rush of shadows, in a dress so deeply blue it appeared black. The crenelations of the iron crown upon her head gave the impression of jackal's ears. She smiled at his improvements to his stage. He had ringed the nine-sided plinth with white candles whose heat had completely licked away the edges of frosty ice round about him. He bowed to her when her gloved hands gave him mocking applause.

"A Song of Sight and Blindness," Jareth said gently. His voice poured from his throat like liquid sugar spiked with broken glass. It was an angry song. Jarring chords of bass and broken guitar filled the hall as his song burst forth in a series of accusations.

_You brought me here to show you who I am._  
_You told me I was blind, and you'd give me light to see._  
_Light, oh light, it's the seeing edge of heat._  
_But I know I could see more than you could ever give me._

_I'm blind; you give no light to see._  
_I'm close to broken; you'll never get to break me._  
_And when I hide, you can only seek by finding._  
_I can't see, and you give sight by blinding._

_When I wait in the dark, I wait for word of yours._  
_I can't see the one I love, you're blocking out her light._  
_But I can see her shadow, though shadows are your slaves._  
_I know her heart is burning, and yours is black as night._

_I'm blind, but I'll take what I need to see._  
_I'm close to broken, you'll never get to break me._  
_When we play this game of hiding and finding_  
_I'll find her first, though your darkness is blinding._

_I'll see the one I can see I'm looking for,_  
_Don't dare to stop me, I still know what I can't see._  
_She's waiting for me beyond the shadows of your desire._  
_She's waiting out there, and she's the one I need._

_I'm blind, but you'll give me the gift of sight_  
_I'm close to broken, but you'll shatter in the light._  
_When we play this game, this game of hide-and-seek_  
_I'll see my way free in less than a week._

The Goblin Queen sat frozen to her throne of ice, her eyes blazing with fury. Jareth gave her a mocking bow.

"Lady," he said, hopping down from his platform. "I have sung my first song and I deserve compensation."

"Your song doesn't please me," the Goblin Queen said.

"Ah, but you never said the songs had to be pleasing. I had to settle for the truth."

"Truth," the Goblin Queen said, curiously. "Oh yes. Truth." She stood up and the folds of her blue-black dress cascaded across the stone floor. "I should have been more specific in my original contract. Want to renegotiate?"

"What's said is said," Jareth replied coldly, as she took his face in her little hands.

"Proper payment, then, for your song," she whispered. She spat in his eye.

He shrieked and clapped his hands over his stinging eyeball. Her spit burned like acid. He bent over double with the intense pain of it.

"A little seasoning for your vitreous humor," the Goblin Queen told him. "You spat in my face with that song. Now I've spat in yours. Sight and blindness. A very valuable gift, a broken eye."

He drew his knuckles away from his face. One eye had broken, indeed. It was black now, all pupil.

"You bitch!" he shouted, with the force of his agony.

"Oh yes," she said. "A bitch. A bitch from Hell, Jareth. If I have to give you payment for your songs, it will be payment for value received. Tomorrow night, a song of companionship and company. Consider your lyrics more prudently next time."

He made a gesture toward her, intending to strangle her with his bare hands if necessary, but she clapped her hands over her head and became a jackal once more, lolloping off and whistling to itself in glee in the darkness.

"Tomorrow night!" she called.


	4. IV A Song of Companionship and Company

**IV. A Song of Companionship and Company**

* * *

Jareth crouched in the darkness, feeling only the pain of his wounded eye. The tears came to soothe it, and he resented them—but at least _she_ wasn't there to see.

Later, he was able to stand and see. Experimentally, he looked at the long corridor with first one eye, then the hurt one, and then both.

He was able to see more than he had before. His mortal eye could see little but shadow and fugue: her empty throne, his empty stage and the thick darkness between. His spit-cursed eye, however… that saw much more. He could see the rough definitions of the weeping rock walls, even the misty outline of the rounded ceiling forty feet above him. Blue, deep blue, except where twisted and obscenely menacing figures were intercut into the stone.

Behind him, directly opposite the wide space of the icy throne, was a tall double door, very narrow, very high, made of dull metal, the matte heaviness of lead, and similarly encrusted with ugly sculptures of human and inhuman bodies tearing and grasping each other, in the throes of mutual torture, or of sexual frenzy. When Jareth looked at it with his mortal eye, it seemed to disappear into the shadows. When he looked at it only with the eye the Goblin Queen had spat in, the figures seemed to writhe and move in a fashion that made him dubious about approaching. But with both eyes, ah… it was only a door, and he could see the handles and thumb-latches that might offer opportunity for escape.

One candle had kept its flame in the rush of the Goblin Queen's passing. He took it up carefully, and opened the left-hand door wide.

The door let out on a long passage of space, an echoing corridor of more darkness and emptiness. Jareth walked quickly, shielding the fragile flame as he went. He walked for a long time, it seemed, but stopped short when he realized the door had, somehow, just led to the echoing emptiness of the throne room and his prisoner's perch.

Jareth cursed and swore and stamped his feet for a few minutes, angry at being thwarted. He cursed and swore and stamped some more when the hot wax from the candle dripped and burned his hand. And then he managed to calm himself, and took the precautions he should have from the beginning, relighting all the candles around the plinth with the feeble light he held.

He took a deep breath and opened the right-hand door. He only vaguely angry this time when he found his way back to the throne again after what seemed like an endless time walking.

"A song of companionship and company, that's what she wants?" he muttered, boosting himself up onto the stage platform again.

Jareth realized that this might be the most difficult theme to elaborate upon. He couldn't remember ever having a companion. He could, if he strained very hard, remember a time and place when he'd been surrounded by all sorts of company. But it had been a sad time… no, not sad. Isolated.

"Majesty is isolating," he said quietly to himself. He drew his fingers through the oblong light of the candle-flame. Yes. He had been a king, once. Hadn't he? And if not a king of a kingdom, a kingdom unto himself. And he had never had a companion

_(but once you did, at least once, you did)_

and rarely felt the lack.

His taskmistress was also majestic. She was also alone. Majesty was isolating. Perhaps that was why she'd taken him. She was lonely, and needed someone or something more substantial than shadow-servants to speak with.

He bared his sharp teeth to the darkness and hissed. He'd been alone before the Goblin Queen had forced him to serve her. If she didn't understand that she'd done this out of a desire for companionship and company, she would come to find out. He would show her. He hoped it would hurt.

He began to sing to the darkness, preparing to deliver his song.

* * *

When the Goblin Queen appeared that evening, her throne-room had been changed into a banqueting-hall. The table was set with white linen and pewter flatware. Desiccated, rotted, and live blossoms overspilled the low vases. The baked and the sweet were on offer, as were several jugs of wine.

And there were people! Such people, all of them made from shadows and songs, yet somehow substantial, in rich colors and fabrics and half-masks on their faces, quick with open smiles and ready banter, joking and laughing, and inviting the Queen to join them at the feast. Nine huge mirrors reflected the light and warmth of the party assembled there. The Queen's throne was the head of the table, and the table was his stage, his cage. And he stood just behind her, pouring the wine for her to eat, eating and drinking only when she thought to offer him a sip from her cup, a dainty morsel from her plate. The laughter never quite touched her, and he could tell that the food for her had all the savour of sand, the wine all the joy of brackwater.

There was an empty space beside her; her throne was meant for two. She looked up at him once, just once, with a child's uncertainty. Her red lips parted, trembling, and she asked, so sadly, so vulnerably, "Won't you sit here, beside me?"

For just one moment he felt his heart beat for her. The loneliness she felt was so unconcealed, and her need for him was all but openly spoken. For just one moment he considered her offer. And in the third moment he remembered how terribly she'd hurt him, and how carelessly and cruelly she'd bound him here as her slave.

"Gentle madam of great persuasion, no." Jareth made his face into a mask of disdain and contempt. "It's hardly fitting for your servant to sit beside you. Find some other. There are many others here more deserving. Of course, they are all shadows. But then, so are you."

Her face turned white with rage, or with pain.

"My servant," she said. "If you insist on being my servant. Perform for us."

"Gladly," he said, jumping atop the table, dislodging many dishes and flowers and bowls of sweetmeats and carafes of wine. The guests took it as a joke.

"A Song of Companionship and Company," Jareth said, and the strum of unseen harps and the vibrating cadences of hautbois rose to accompany him.

_The lost and the lonely, they congregate here,_  
_ Listening to the song you've demanded to hear._  
_ I give you good company, but we're alone._  
_ They're only shadows; we're alone._

_ Drink you the wine, your cup runneth over._  
_ The guest pour you more, or hand you another._  
_ I give you good company, but we're alone._  
_ The wine brings no cheer; we're alone._

_ Eat you the food, your plate can hold more._  
_ I've laid you this feast, and yet it's a bore._  
_ I give you good company, but we're alone._  
_ The food has no taste; we're alone._

_ Queen of the shadows, you're without peer._  
_ Don't you understand what's happening here?_  
_ You've stolen good company; you're alone._  
_ You've made me your slave; you're alone._

He walked slowly down the length of the table as he sang, carelessly kicking aside the tableware and candelabra which vanished before they could hit the floor and shatter. And one by one, the guests, the food, the drink, and the warmth disappeared as well as he sang. The distance between his stage and her throne increased, until she was sitting far back from him, outside the magic circle he had conjured. And he lowered himself carefully down, stretching his neck out as if for the executioner, and laid his head on her empty plate as the last notes thrummed and disappeared into the echoing silence.

"Now," Jareth said, rolling over and looking the Goblin Queen in the eyes. "If you wish, you may eat and drink me, and shit me out. But nothing on Earth or Under will save you from being alone once you're rid of me. And if I'm your slave, I can't ever be your companion." He took the sharp, sharp knife laid by at her plate and held it against his throat.

"Cut here," he said, "If my song displeased you."

She approached carefully. Her white arms, gloved in long black gloves, were very strong as she took hold of the knife, took hold of his hand. She looked down at him.

Three perfect tears shone on her face. The mask had dropped; she was trembling. One of these single shimmering drops, precious as jewels, slid down her cheek and landed on his lips. If misery had a taste, it was salt water.

She gently took the knife away and threw it out into the darkness. She bent her head and kissed his offered mouth.

"Tomorrow night," she murmured in broken tones. "Tomorrow night sing me a song of the pleasure and pains of the flesh." She shuffled back, her thick taffeta skirts rustling over the stones. "Tomorrow night. But tonight, if you will… be my companion and company."

"One type of servitude for another?" he asked coldly. "Instead of being your musician, you'd make me your whore?"

"No," she whispered. "I've remembered what it was like, to be loved. I won't command you. But come to me if you choose. Find me if you wish to find me."

Instead of transforming herself into the jackal-eared black dog, she wrapped her arms around herself and fled, weeping, around the table and through the double doors , which opened to receive her and gnashed together, closed.

* * *

_Many thanks to Frances Osgood: this story is a reiteration of her story "Seven."_


	5. V A Song of Pleasure and Pains

**V. A Song of the Pleasure and Pains of the Flesh**

* * *

Jareth stood there, stunned, for quite some time. He paced around and around the beveled edges of his platform, trying to understand the sick stew of feelings that had crashed down upon him in a wave.

His first thoughts were of anger and vengeance. He'd wounded the Goblin Queen deep enough to draw tears, if not blood, as he'd planned. He wanted to feel triumphant about that. He wanted to crow, victorious, and dance his high-heeled boots upon her chair like he'd trampled her heart. He wanted his anger to burn as brightly as it had before, just a few days ago. She had stolen him, and she had hurt him... and now she asked for his companionship and company.

But the song was a sword with a blade for a hilt-no matter who wielded it, or who was wounded by it, the effect was the same. He hurt. He felt, very strongly now, how deeply he'd been hurt. His days before this, before the Goblin Queen-these days had been like the first shock of a terrible injury. The pain didn't happen until the wounded one died, or began to recover.

The Goblin Queen knew more about him than he knew about himself. And she was apparently determined that he would recover.

"Why?" Jareth shouted into the echoing darkness of her throne room. "Why should she care? And why should I?" But he was a musician, and knew all the tones of voice that betokened mood-his tone wasn't angry. It was sorrowful. It was lonely.

"Damn her," he muttered. He was going to go to her. It was already decided. The Goblin Queen was dangerous. She was an enemy. But perhaps she meant to be kind. Perhaps he could kill her with kindness.

"Liar," he said to himself, smiling a little. All these things were true, but truest of all was that his flesh heated to her touch, even just the touch of her eyes. And he was lonely. He didn't want to bring death to her. He wanted to bed down with her.

Still, he waited a goodly long time, prolonging the wait, before he opened the tall doors together, and discovered that they led, if opened each at the same time, to a broad passage and another set of doors. He wasn't surprised to see the Goblin Queen's bedchamber waiting, easy as a stroll, just beyond.

* * *

The Goblin Queen slept, as a child might sleep, curled up on herself for comfort, a look of unhappiness on her face.

She had waited a long time for him, it was certain, Jareth mused. She had had time to want and wait, and time to weep, if the redness of her eyes was any indication. She had had time for longing and disappointment; the white candles on their stands around her bed burnt down into cups of wax.

He looked down on her. The white bedclothes were pulled up to her waist, and her body was hidden by the long skeins of her black hair and the innocent cut of her long white nightgown. With an air of jaded debauchery, he grabbed the sheet and the featherbed and slowly tugged them down off her body to the foot of her bed. He felt like an exhausted gourmet in the face of an often-sampled but well-prepared dish. He had appetite, but little curiosity. The slowly receding tide of white bedlinen delivered her to his eyes bit by bit, until she lay there fully revealed before him, the covers bunched at the foot of the bed. She was beautiful, she was. And this wide round bed had been meant to hold two; she slept on the left-hand side, and the pillows of the right-hand side were without indentation-as if she were waiting, even in sleep, for someone to come and sleep next to her.

"Lady," he said softly. She startled up, as if his voice had been a thunderbolt. Her arms and hands came up to shield herself modestly, though she was hardly nude.

"I didn't think you would come," she said, blushing and lowering her face to her lap. "I decided you didn't want me."

"Perhaps I don't," he said carelessly. He saw her perfect little red lower lip tremble like a droplet of blood, and felt somewhat contrite. "Don't cry," Jareth said. "That was cruel of me. I do want you, but you may send me away now if you like."

"No," she whispered, shaking the dark sea of her hair back over her shoulders. "It's for you to decide. You can accept or refuse. The choice is yours, not mine."

"Then I'll stay," Jareth said. He unknotted the cords that held his cloak under his shoulder and let it fall to the floor.

"To love me?" the Goblin Queen's breathy little voice asked.

"Love?" Jareth said dubiously. "Oh no. Not love. Let's say tonight that I provoked certain appetites in myself that you've offered to satisfy." He undid the frogs that held his jacket closed and shrugged it from his shoulders.

"Appetite for food and wine?" she murmured. Her voice teased, and it made him smile kindly at her, if not for very long.

"The pleasure and pains of the flesh," Jareth countered, drawing his black shirt up and over his arms. "Though it may be my pain and your pleasure, or the reverse, my lady. Will you change your mind now, and send me away? One of us is sure to be hurt. I plan for it to be you, but my plans seem to run in strange directions lately." His hair fluffed out as he drew his shirt over his head and cast it aside. "Will your husband be back soon? I'd prefer no interruptions of this convenient interlude."

"My husband is lost," she said sadly. "I don't know when he'll return. Or if."

"So I'm here to comfort you in your loneliness. As I thought. What an irony." He gripped the footboard of the bed; it was, like her throne, made all of black ice. He intended to hurt her. He intended to leap upon her like an animal, rend her with his nails and bite her with his teeth, put scars of red and pink on that perfect white skin, and steal his pleasure from her. He would hurt her. He would. In just one moment more, he would.

Instead, he eased off his boots, standing first on one foot, then another. He knew he looked silly, and the Goblin Queen laughed, but her laughter this time was friendly instead of mocking. He smiled back at her and then removed the very last of his clothing.

"Why are you here?" she asked, drawing the white sheet back over herself once more.

"What, it isn't obvious?" He slapped his naked flesh and crawled into her bed atop her covers. "I didn't know I was blind until you blinded me. I didn't know I was alone until you told me you were lonely." He hovered over her on his hands and knees. "You are a terrifying teacher, but I don't think I'll learn to be truly afraid of you unless I make you terrified of me." He kissed her mouth, felt her go pliant under him. "So should I be rough with you? Forceful? Cruel? Emphasizing pain, your pain? I'm tempted." He took the collar of her nightgown in his fist and ripped it down the front.

"If you must," she said. Her green eyes were wide and frightened. "Jareth, if you must."

"But I won't." He kissed her again, crawled deep inside the bed beside her, and gave what he wanted to give of himself to her.

* * *

Later, much later, when the candles had guttered into drowned pricks of light, and he dozed in the circle of her arms, she touched his head very gently. Her little fingernails scritched delicately over his scalp, and combed his hair smooth. He had an enormous feeling of rightness and connectedness, a calm feeling of belonging and welcome that hadn't been present in their sexual gymnastics. _I have been here before_, Jareth thought. _But not with this one. Who was she? She held me like this, touched me like this, loved me like this._

A woman's fingers tapped on his head and drew cleanly through his hair. _Who is she?_

"Sarah?" he murmured, and clutched the woman beside him tight, afraid of having her go.

"Who?" the Goblin Queen's voice was light, as if he'd told a joke.

"My...wife." He jerked away from her as if she were some poisonous insect. He threw himself out of the bed and efficiently and carelessly put his clothing back on. The scent of her remained on his skin and made him mournful. "I don't remember what happened. But I remember who she was. I remember her name. Sarah. My Sarah. And now I truly hurt, because I've betrayed her." He hid his face in his hands and sobbed in three sharp spasms. "Don't you hurt, Lady? Don't you remember your husband's name?"

"Jareth," the Goblin Queen said coldly, "This display is most unbecoming. You'll damage your voice if you keep this up."

"I don't care!" he cried. "Every way through just leads to something more wretched. Every song is like a link in a chain, binding me to you."

"Then take comfort in the binding," the Goblin Queen said. "There's no other option for you, other than death."

He turned his back to her, wiping his face on the long cuffs of his sleeves.

"Jareth," she said again. "It's time for your song. It's time that you sang to me again."

When he looked back over his shoulder at her, he saw he was once more standing on his platform, and she, dressed from throat to toe in sequined black velvet, leaned like a piece of the night sky against her throne of black ice.

He kept his face turned away from her.

"A Song of the Pleasure and Pains of the Flesh," he sang weakly. The sound of a distant reed-pipe joined his song. His head was bent and his voice was broken.

_All I know of pleasure is the memory of its absence._  
_All I know of pain is the crucial pain you give._  
_I don't understand what has happened to me._  
_I don't understand what it means to live._

_Your flesh brought me pleasure, the grasp of your embrace._  
_Your flesh brought me pain; I've betrayed the one I love._  
_I don't understand what has happened to us._  
_I don't understand what it means to live._

_I lived without pleasure in the circle of my own company_  
_I lived without pain, my memory like a sieve._  
_I don't understand why you've done this to yourself._  
_I don't understand why you want me to live._

_The heart is made of flesh._  
_My heart hurts._  
_If pain will make me live,_  
_It's my pleasure to be real._

Jareth's heart was stabbed through with a dagger of ice, just as he'd stabbed her inviting body with a dagger made of flesh. He couldn't see, he couldn't think. All the edges of memory, distinct memory of others, floated away from him like ice in water. But he could see the color-trails they left behind. He had been somebody once. He had been free, though bound by obligations. He had been loved. He had flown.

And he felt, with his cracked-open heart, that the Goblin Queen hadn't been the one who'd wronged him, or stolen his memory from him. She was as cruel and determined as a surgeon, cutting to cure, unable to provide anaesthesia... or unwilling. He was utterly at her mercy, just as she had been at his.

"Behold your servant," he said, gasping, ready to fall on the floor at her feet. "What would you have of me next?"

"Your next song," she said, "Will be about judgement."

He knelt before her, and she patted his head, just once. In tenderness. In ownership.


	6. VI Judgment

**VI. Judgment**

* * *

The Goblin Queen slept beside him in her wide bed, but Jareth didn't sleep. He couldn't sleep. He couldn't remember the last time he had slept. He turned very slowly and looked at her. She was beautiful, more beautiful than beauty. Her skin was like milk, her eyelashes like soot, and her lips as red as fresh blood. Her body was supple and her hair soft as silk. She wasn't cold. She had been warm. He'd filled her with himself again and again until he was exhausted. And as if his fatigue was also something that filled her hollowness, she was the one who slept, after, while he remained wakeful. Jareth pulled slowly away from her, tucking the covers around her to keep her warm, keep her from noticing his absence.

He'd made love to her the first time without any blame. Tonight, he had done so knowing he was committing adultery. He had no excuse for his behavior, none save a selfish need for comfort and pleasure in a place that offered so little of either. He didn't even have a ring to take off to denote his shameful infidelity—not even the memory of a ring, but he rubbed his left third and pinky fingers over and over again until they were sore.

The Goblin Queen's tiring table stood opposite the bed, and he could see his reflection in the threefold mirror. On it, a bowl of velvet peaches, a king's ransom in pearls and diamonds, and a thick black box. Everything else on this vanity of black ice was delicate and sparkling, but the box was thick and heavy, nine-sided and squat. Jareth came forward until her mirrors caught him in their inward turning, and put his hand on the box. It was made of iron and without visible clasp. There was only a strange device melded into the metal, a double-spiral in iron inset into a gold double-bladed sigil. It made him think of an animal's horned head, or perhaps the cupping gesture of a bird of prey.

The Goblin Queen's cool hands twined around his chest and her weight pressed against his back.

"What is it?" he asked.

"A box," she murmured.

"How do I open it?" he asked.

"You must be willing to open it," she said.

"A coffin," he said. "A tomb?" he asked. Her hands provoked and distracted him, but he brushed them away like blowflies. The box was the right size to enclose an infant, or an animal.

"Be careful," she warned, as he moved to touch the box. "Dangerous things wait inside. Are you worthy?" He watched her out of the corner of his eye through the mirror. "Are you worthy? Are you pure?"

"No, I'm not worthy," Jareth growled, but he reached out and took the box in his hands anyway. As he did so, Jareth had the sickening feeling of the world shifting all around him. He bit his upper lip to tamp down his nausea and raised the box higher, to his ear. There was a humming sound, very faint.

"Hello?" he said, and listened to a reply.

"Who am I?" the voice inside the box asked, in a voice softer than the hum. "What must I sing?"

"I'll sing a song of judgment," Jareth sang, "A pocket full of rye. Four-and-twenty blackbirds, baked in a pie." He laughed, feeling himself on the edge of madness. A screaming murder of crows rushed through the air, circled, and vanished. He shook the box and the world shook under his feet. The Goblin Queen gave a soft cry. She had fallen to the floor, and her white nightgown pooled around her like snow. He narrowed his eyes at her and turned back to what he had in his hands. He brought his face closer and closer until his broken eye stared deep into the core of the double-spiral sigil. Blackness there, and binding. The creviced curves opened up a slit to the darkness within, but he could see nothing.

_What's in here?_ Jareth wondered.

"_Ask the right questions,"_ a gruff voice advised him. Perhaps it was only the memory of a voice.

"Only you are fit to judge this case," the Goblin Queen's voice murmured behind him.

The tiny voice inside the box began to sing.

_Only you are fit to judge this case  
Four locks stand betwixt me and my rightful place.  
I'll cause harm to those of good and evil nature  
And arbitrary joy; such is my stature.  
But here I wait and am constrained.  
Bound forever, bound by name._

The box thrummed under his fingers with the pressure of the voice within. Jareth stared into the dark, seeing nothing reflected, nothing at all. But he sang back, and the clashing chords of some impossible electric guitar came to accompany him.

_Only you are able to open your box.  
Bound round about with magical locks.  
No wickedness done should earn such pain  
Nor any joy you give excuse constraint.  
I say awake you, and then be free.  
I absolve you. Let another absolve me._

He looked down at the box, turning it over and over in his hands, staring at himself in the mirror. He felt dizzy.

"Is that your song?" the Goblin Queen asked, mockingly.

In sudden rage he turned and threw the iron box at her with all the strength of his arm. It passed right through her, and cracked and sparked against the stone floor.

"Sarah," he said, turning back to the mirror. "Sarah, please help me."

In the mirror, he saw the Goblin Queen rise to stand just behind him again.

But no, it wasn't the Goblin Queen. It was a woman, a woman with dark hair and pale skin and red lips and green eyes. She was very like the Goblin Queen, but where the Goblin Queen was perfect, this woman was not. Her dark hair had strands of grey. Her skin was spattled across her nose and forearms with little freckles. And her mouth wasn't like blood. It was flesh, slightly chapped as if from nibbling with her slightly crooked front teeth. "Sarah," he said, reaching out to touch her image in the mirror. "Sarah, forgive me for what I've done."

"Jareth," said the Goblin Queen behind him, but it was Sarah's mouth in the mirror that moved. "I've had to do some pretty distasteful things myself just to get this close to you." She gave a bitter grin. "We'll trade over-the-knee spankings at a later date, okay?"

Jareth laughed with relief. He didn't know himself, but he knew Sarah. Only she would be so irreverent.

"How do I find you?" he asked. "It's all reflections here."

"Just stay awake," she said, reaching out and touching his hand from the other side of the mirror. "Stay awake so I can get you out. Keep singing."

"Keep singing," the Goblin Queen hissed, pressing her hand over his so that the mirrors were occluded with scribbles of frost. "Singing." The mirror sizzled and cracked. "Singing for me, and me alone." The mirrors shattered in a thousand pieces. Jareth ducked, shielding his face with his arms and felt the splinters of glass enter his shoulders and neck and buttocks like the prick of a thousand hard quills.

"You _will_ sing," the Goblin Queen said, putting her hand on his neck, "Tomorrow night, a song of sleep, a hundred years without waking."

"No!" Jareth said, backing away from her, his naked feet pierced by shivering shards of mirror.

"A red cloak for you," she murmured, and tilted her head back and laughed. "My redcoat, my bird. You'll sing a song of sleep." She picked up the box from the floor and rocked it as if it were an infant.

"If I sleep," Jareth said, "I won't be able to finish the task you set me." He knew his voice was pleading, desperate. If not for the sprinklings of glass that dusted the floor, he would have gone down on his knees before her. "Please, no."

"Yes. You will lose. And the one you want to rescue you will be long dead. Then there will be room enough for us, just the two of us, and the endless dark. The century's lullaby, Jareth. Tomorrow night."

The fear he felt at the prospect of weaving himself such a horrific spell was like nothing Jareth had ever felt before. The Goblin Queen advanced, the box held out before her like a threat. He felt the blood running down his body, but he couldn't look away. It seemed to him then that the box opened, somehow, and beckoned him inside.

Jareth closed his eyes on her. Darkness and silence enfolded him. Forgetfulness waited there, as well. It would last a century, if the Goblin Queen had her way.

"Tomorrow night," the Goblin Queen said. She laughed again, and he lost consciousness.

* * *

_This chapter was written in tight consultation with Frances Osgood. She's writing the melody for "Seven" and I'm doing a descant. We're telling different stories, but Chapter Six is, for both of us, a chance to collaborate thematically on a higher level. We've been borrowing and intercutting with each other all along, but this is the place where our stories meet and cross and part again, and move on their parallel tracks. Hope all you readers enjoy! And if anyone else wants to play with this prompt, be our guest. The price is seven songs…_


	7. VII Lullaby

**VII. Lullaby**

* * *

"You're under a spell," Sarah said, as if from a great distance. "Jareth, can you hear me?"

Jareth shifted in the darkness. His arms… no, his wings were bound. It was very, very black, and he fought down the claustrophobia that threatened to choke him. _Owl's body_, he thought to himself. T_his is natural. Sometimes I wear an owl's body._ His heart beat and he struggled again, but the bindings around him were made of… linen, and magic. Potent magic. Angry magic. He trilled out cautiously to Sarah. He heard her gasp and suddenly the world tilted and shifted. He wanted to reach out to her for reassurance and comfort, but couldn't.

"Jareth, beloved. Listen to me. You're locked up in some sort of weird iron box. It's got nine sides and it's very, very cold. I can't get it open, but I can hear you in there. I can feel you. Can you hear me?"

Jareth hooted weakly.

"If there are locks, they're on the inside," Sarah said. "I heard you singing about them last night. Three more locks and you'll be free. Dearest, do you understand?"

He called out to her again. He wanted to call her name.

_Sarah_, he shouted with his mind. _ Sarah! Help me!_

"I hear you," she said. "Jareth, I do. Your daughter wants you. She needs you."

_Who am I?_ he asked her. _Who? Who?_

"You're the Goblin King, and my husband. You're the Goblin King and the father of my children." He heard her voice break. "Be calm, dearest. There's something else you need to know."

He waited for what seemed like an agonizing eternity.

"There's a terrible presence in there with you. So much rage. So much pain. It's a demon, it's a monster. It's keeping you very close to it. It _lies_ to you. It's feeding off you. It wants to have you. You mustn't let it consume you. You have to fight it. And whatever you do, you mustn't set it free."

He felt his heart beat in his chest. He refused to be afraid. _Goblin King. Jareth. Dada. Yes._ He sipped at the feelings these names inspired, even if the memories refused to come. He felt Sarah's love go out to him. He was vast, he was full of names, he was loved and he loved. He was as infinite as his prison was narrow.

He was a judge. This thing styling itself Goblin Queen… a demon, and a liar. Perhaps evil. But also lost and lonely. Nothing that yearned to be free should be bound. He trusted Sarah, but he also trusted his own power and judgment. He would have to decide what to do. No one else could decide for him. No one else had the right.

He closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, he was sitting on the Goblin Queen's throne, wearing nothing but a narrow enfolding cloak the color of arterial blood. _The color of a judge,_ he thought,_ a judge of Hell. Have I really been asleep so long that I've forgotten?_

He sang out for a harp of gold, and one appeared in his lap. He sang out for the Goblin Queen, and she appeared on the nine-sided platform before him. She wore sackcloth and ashes, the very picture of penitence and sorrow. He remembered how he had cause to punish her, and even the right to destroy her.

"I remember a song," he said. "Lady, you have commanded me to sing. And so I have a song for you. A lullaby. It wasn't composed for you, but you may share it."

The Goblin Queen bowed her head. Jareth plucked the strings of his harp and let his voice guide him into the memory of the song she had requested.

_Oh-little-girl, my darling, my sweet,  
Close your eyes and sleep, close your eyes and sleep.  
Tomorrow there is time to part and meet,  
Close your eyes and sleep, close your eyes and sleep._

_Little baby Queen, my darling, my babe_  
_Close your eyes and sleep, close your eyes and sleep._  
_Tomorrow there is time to dance and play,_  
_Close your eyes and sleep, close your eyes and sleep._

_All the world is yours, my darling, my dear,_  
_Close your eyes and sleep, close your eyes and sleep._  
_Little Princess of the Labyrinth, rest without fear._  
_Close your eyes and sleep, close your eyes and sleep._

Slowly, the Goblin Queen sank down on her knees, and then slowly crumpled in on herself on the nine-sided plinth. Jareth stood forward, sweeping the open edge of his cloak aside for his feet, and came down to watch as her eyes opened and closed slowly, like a little toddler offering token resistance to Morpheus.

"Tomorrow," Jareth said, putting his hand gently over her brow, "You will have a song of truth and lies. After that I'll sing my final song, my final theme. And then, in my official capacity, I will decide whether you will be free when I leave."

"Why are you being kind?" she murmured sleepily.

"I'm not kind," he said, but he leaned over and kissed her forehead. "But I am capable of a certain measure of generosity." She sighed and clutched at him.

"Tell me now," he said against her ear, "Was it you who stole my memories?" He carefully unpicked her hold on him and stroked her hands until they stopped clenching into claws.

"I don't remember," she said, closing her eyes for the final time that evening. "Please don't leave me."

Half-loving, half-exasperated, he plucked out the melody of the lullaby on the strings again.

* * *

_Just a quick reminder to readers that this story is just a riff on Frances Osgood's story "Seven," which is turning out to be quite a delightfully complex tale of destiny and power, while mine is just an idle theme, no more yielding than a dream._

_The "terrible presence in there" line comes directly from Poltergeist, which is probably the scariest movie ever made. However, The Possession, which is about a Dybbuk Box, is likewise scary and also rather inspiring for this story. Let both Frances and I know how you're enjoying things._


	8. VIII A Song of Truth and Lies

**VIII. A Song of Truth and Lies**

* * *

_A song of truth and lies_, Jareth thought to himself, leaving his harp upon the throne. _There are lies which are true, and truths which are lies. And these things are relevant to my function here, and these things are very dangerous.  
_  
The shadows lay thick over the blue hall. He discarded his red cloak and summoned the fingers of darkness to dress him. He couldn't quite remember what he'd been wearing when he first came here, to the labyrinth of the Goblin Queen, but he remembered the feeling of it against his skin. Black shoes without heels, polished to a mirror's shine. A loose t-shirt, one of Sarah's. Blue jeans, a long black coat made of reflective plastic. He sighed in pleasure as his clothing came back to him, but something was missing. Something important. He strode out of the throne room boldly, through the doubled doors, and came to the Queen's bedchamber.

Jareth called for a light; the light came as the candles puffed into illumination. This chamber was barren again, icy again, the bedsheets and the linen of the tiring table frosted over with a dusting of glittering snow. The box. It was the box he wanted.

He put his hands over it, but didn't pick it up. A nine-sided box, the same shape and form as his nine-sided stage. A nine-sided box the very same configuration as the box Sarah claimed he was trapped in. He was here, but somehow also there, inside, and simultaneously outside. Boxes wrapped, tripled by three, perfect arcane mathematics. Jareth rubbed his hand over the triskelion sigil that marked the box. He dug in three fingers and lifted the sigil out. Black smoke sifted out of the setting and he blew it away. The sigil had been melted into the top of the box, as if the iron were butter and the bronze had been hot.

"I know you," he said to the amulet. Bronze and brass and iron. There was a cord that had been hidden by the inset; he hung the pendant around his neck and felt a sudden surge of rightness. The winged edges pointed downward. "Mine," he said.

The shadows murmured and the ice cracked and splintered in the distance. "This is also mine!" Jareth shouted to the dark, leaving the bedchamber and walking purposefully about the Goblin Queen's prison. Doors led to other doors, passages led to other passages, but the ways always eventually returned to their center, to the throne room. It was a small space, actually, curved in on itself like a serpent biting its own tail. And it was cold, so cold. Not even the lamps he summoned, not even the candle he carried, not even the heat of his own body could surmount that coldness. "Mine," he said, laying claim to every in-between space. "Remember you are also mine!"

He had the very certain feeling that all of this was his by right, and also that it was much, much bigger than it appeared to be here. Something had happened. Someone had stolen this from him. This was an offshoot of his Labyrinth, but it had been sealed off. It had been made into a prison. Who had done this? Who could have dared? His anger warmed him where his clothing had failed. Oh, yes, he had a temper. His anger warmed him, but didn't help him think. He stroked his pendant until it took on the heat of his body, and let the cold work over his head until it cleared his thoughts.

He stared down at the sleeping woman on her nine-sided platform. "Goblin Queen," he murmured. "So where are the goblins?"

Ah yes, he remembered goblins. They were much less subtle than the shadows which served the Queen here. They were rude, and fleshy, and dirty and crude. They sang vulgar songs and drank disgusting beer and had a parliament of black chickens that always seemed underfoot. Not the sort of creatures that this self-styled Goblin Queen would approve of, not with her desire for austere beauty and maddening empty order.

He seated himself on the throne and stared down at the Goblin Queen.

"Seem as thou once was to me, be as I did once know thee," he sang to her. _Truth and lies, truth and lies_, he thought, and watched her carefully. Slowly, the memory of her bled back into his mind. He fought down revulsion. He remembered her. He remembered her very well.

* * *

She had come to him in his pleasure-gardens in the Labyrinth, the Labyrinth where he was King. He had met there with many fae women, many-many, searching for a wife who would deign to keep him company. All the fae women were beautiful; beauty was their essence, their nature. But one by one, these first courtships had disappointed him. They had come to him, curious and yielding, first curtseying and your-majestying and demurring to his suggestions for this or that diversion, this or that game. And the middle, the middle part of these dalliances was likewise the same—they had attempted to overmaster him, toy with him, treat him as though he were a mortal man, gave subtle and then overt condescension to the mortal flesh encasing his immortal essence. And the endings of these affairs slowly became also the same. He hurt them. He spied out their secrets and their names, he mocked their desires, and he gave them back their natures tenfold in force strong enough to bring tears. Beautiful tears. He had begun to enjoy the terminus of these courtship games as if their cries and their flight were the actual purpose of his rough wooing. He had begun to understand that there was no mate for him to be found among his own people.

And then there was _her_. She had approached him boldly, simply, and asked that he pay court to her. He had been surprised to see her, see any woman of any race who dared to come and speak to him of love after the reputation he had built. He had attempted to unpick the glamour she wore—prelude to a more thorough undressing inevitable in the middle game—and found there was none. A dark-haired young woman with fierce dark eyes and skin like olive-wood. Teeth like salt. A cloak of dog-skin and molted black feathers that covered her from neck to thigh.

"You're not fae," he said with contempt. "Why should I bother to speak with you?"

"I too am the child of the wasteland, the unknown ground. I am not of your race, Beautiful Voice, but I am very like you. Your own women have been cruel to you. Perhaps you should look for comfort among your cousins." She squatted on the pavement near him and observed one of the fire-fountains with interest. She played with the sparks like they were living flowers.

"Liliu," Jareth had said in disgust. "Demonspawn. Daughter of the starveling dog."

"And daughter of owls," she said boldly. "Perhaps interesting to you, O-Prince-of-Owls."

"So Lilith sends her daughter to beg for my favors?" he sneered. "You're not fit to kiss my boots. I don't dally with demon women."

"Oh, but once your people and mine did love one another, Shining One. We chose different paths, but we remain the same. The angels and the Most High turned their faces from you, and ignored you in your hour of greatest trial. The demons and Prince Morningstar did not. We saw you, and we pitied you, and we sent you the strength of the nine circles and the power of the City of Dis. A palace waits for you there, if you marry me. Let me court you. Let me woo you." She approached him, and he found himself strangely comforted with her scent and her blandishments. "Let me win you," she said, wrapping her slim arms around his neck. "Let Hell provide what Heaven will not. Love me. Marry me. Become part of the clan which is truly Underground, yet another step further removed from the hatefulness of God and men."

He laughed, surprising himself. "Show me, then. Show me something new."

It had been very beautiful, for a time, to be the pursuer and not the pursued. They rose to the Earth in the form of a black dog and a white owl, and caused mischief for children and malficia for adults. They tempted and beguiled and damned in equal measure, holding back no blessing given for evil or curse applied to the righteous. And they spurned the invitations of his people, the fae, laughing at them, sneering at them, refusing all gestures toward friendship and reconciliation. In fact, they took particular delight in visiting arbitrary harm on those who he had already harmed.

"Be my husband?" the black dog implored.

"Not yet," the white owl said. "Not yet."

They leapt down to Hell and danced in the flames, rode the waves of cold air and icy rock, and offered comfort to the damned. They played hide-and-seek with the demons there, first playing at being human, and then at being fae. They threw gum-wrappers into the Pit and sang howling harmonizing songs to the descant of the souls of the damned. And under their combined cloaks of fur and feathers, they made frenzied love until the cliffs of Erebus bloomed golden flowers at every third step.

"Be my husband?" the ancient girl cajoled.

"Not yet," the inhuman man demurred, "Not yet."

And so they returned to the Labyrinth, as Jareth had grown bored with the middle part of courtship and was eager to see the third act, the one made of tears. He laughed at her as she abased herself to buy his love, acting the pony for goblins, fetching his slippers, polishing his boots, tasting his food, warming his bed.

"And have I won your love?" the demoness asked, kneeling at his feet.

He summoned forth a crystal; he summoned forth a box. "I've brought you a gift," he said, smiling. The box was iron and had nine sides. He sang a series of notes that opened it, the lid sliding apart in nine perfect curved pieces. "It's for you," he said softly, his voice mimicking the velvet cadence of love. "A necklace all made of gold and brass and iron." He offered the box to her, and her trembling fingers reached out to touch the gift. It leapt like a snake and coiled around her neck and dragged her inside the box, which sealed. "A collar," he said, laughing. "A collar to hang around your slender black throat, Liliu." He shook the box once, and from deep inside, heard her scream. "Keep that, then, Lady, would-be Goblin Queen. My heart will never be yours."

"Let me out!" she cried. "Jareth! Let me go and I'll never trouble you again."

"I'll sing seven songs for you before you're ever allowed to go, Lady. But considering that nothing you have done has ever moved me to sing, I suspect you'll stay in there forever." He threw the box with violence until it disappeared into some black oubliette—he didn't care where. "And you're right, you'll never trouble me again."

* * *

He gasped with the fullness of memory. The little demoness, the object of his affections and cruelties—the years had not been kind to her. How many years had it been since he had trapped her here? Her skin was pale for want of light, her hair matted, fingers blood-red from clawing at the edges of her prison, mouth red from biting herself.

"Lady," said Jareth. "I have done you grievous harm, when all you did was offer me yourself. Forgive me, for I was not then as I am now. A Song of Truth and Lies." He hummed as he climbed on the platform beside her and slowly, slowly, raised her up into his arms.

_Truth to tell, I never loved you,_  
_ but I never told you lies._  
_ My heart was too cold,_  
_ You saw it in my eyes._

_ Truth to tell, I was the monster_  
_ Younger, less innocent than you._  
_ I gave you cruelty for your kindness._  
_ It was wrong of me, Liliu._

_ Truth to tell, you came with mercy._  
_ What Heaven neglected, Hell supplied._  
_ But don't claim me as your husband,_  
_ "Goblin Queen," you know you lied._

"We've been told that it's our nature not to love, but only to hate," Jareth said, and dressed her again in her cloak of dog's fur. He touched her very tenderly, very chastely. "Gentle cousin, sweet once-upon-a-time sweetheart, I've learned that's not true. I've given you just cause to destroy me, with the power of that hate."

"Only if I am free," she said, staring hatred at him. "Only if you sing your seventh song will I be able to leave and pay you back what you've earned from me."

"Yes," said Jareth, nodding. "But did you love me, even once? Here in this well of truth, this sinkhole, this prison I made for you—was there ever a moment where you loved me?"

"Yes," she hissed. "Even here. Even here I loved you. And I hate you all the more for that."

"Then tomorrow I'll sing my seventh song, and set you free, Lady."

"You still have contempt for me?" Her dark eyes kindled with green sparks. "You think so little of my power and my hate and my will to hurt you that you'll release me, just like that?"

"Just like that," Jareth said.

"And you think your generosity will make me forgive you?"

"I think you'll do what you must," Jareth said. "But there is this…" He buttoned up his coat, up to the neck. "Long ago, you offered me the comfort and companionship of the demons of Hell, to slough my nature and my name and become one of you. By right of what you've suffered at my hands, you may do the same. You can eschew the comfort and companionship of your kind and come be one of the fae. Give up the war with Heaven. Give up the careful politics of the netherworld and the censure of God and Satan and come be one of us.

"This is why I came, Lady. This is why I sought you out and came to where you dwell. No one compelled me, no one forced me, no one tricked me. I entered your box with you to offer you freedom. And that will be my last song to you." He picked up the heavy necklace, the collar all of gold and brass and iron. The glyphs on its surface lit with balefire as he hung it around her neck. "A song of freedom. You may choose what best to do with it, once it's yours."

He leapt up into the air and became an owl, flying on silent wings away from her. "Tomorrow night!" he called. "Tomorrow night!"

* * *

_After writing this I'm more sure than ever that nothing is much worse than being Jareth's jilted ex.  
One more chapter to go!_


End file.
